I write these articles the month before they are published. As you
read this I will be taking my sons to the
Star Wars Celebration V
event in Orlando Florida. We also have 3-day passes to Universal Studios
park where they just opened up
The Wizarding
World of Harry Potter. So... all my attention has been getting ready
for this trip. So this month will be a bit light on content. And since I
will be taking this trip in August, it is likely that September's column
will be a bit short of as well.

I went to a comic book convention during July. I tried using my 50mm
f/1.4 lens because it works really well in low light. Unfortunately, it
required me to back way too much to get pictures easily of all the
people dressed up in costume. The 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 kit lens that came
with my Canon EOS T2i camera worked, but I had to raise the ISO setting
higher than I would have liked.

I also took both lenses to car shows. I tried using the 50mm lens but is
was too much trouble. I had to back so far away from the car I was
taking a picture of that people walked in front of you because they
don't know you are trying to take a picture. Keep in mind that on the
Canon EOS dSLR cameras the sensor is not full frame, and you have to use
a crop factor with the lens. So the 50mm lens is equivalent to an 80mm
lens on a full frame camera. That is just too long at a car show with
people walking all around.

So I purchased the 28mm f/1.8 lens. This lens is very well built, and it
feels just like the 50mm f/1.4. I went to two car shows in or near
Austin and left the 28mm lens on the entire time... just to see how it
would work. I never had a problem with the lens. I was able to easily
"sneaker zoom" a few feet forward or back to get any shot I wanted. I
think this is going to be my go to lens at the convention.

I am planning on renting a better zoom lens for the trip. I will report
on that when I get back.

I purchased Western Digital's My Book 3.0 in 1 TB size. I was running
low on disc space everywhere. The extra TB of space really helped. The
version of this drive I purchased came with a PCI-E card for the USB
3.0. I do not yet have a motherboard that supports USB 3.0.

My plan was to install this on my server. I already moved my 1.5 TB USB
2.0 external drive to the server so that video files would be accessible
to my Blu-Ray player even with my PC shut down. I assumed I would do the
same with the USB 3.0 drive. I recently installed a Gigabit Ethernet
card in this server so that I could get Gigabit access to it from my PC.
The wireless router I bought for my apartment supported Gigabit speed
for the wired ports. Gigabit speed to the USB 3.0 drive would be about
as fast as if it were attached to my PC.

Well... my server's motherboard does not have PCI-E slots. I was forced
to install this drive on my desktop computer. While I was in there I
removed the TV Tuner card. I have not used it in a long time. The
install when without a hitch.

I moved almost all the files from my desktop's D: drive to the USB 3
drive, as well as all my music that was taking up precious space on my
C: drive. I also moved a bunch of tutorial and podcasts from the server
down to the USB 3 drive.

All the drives (internal/external/network/etc) on my computer show in
green in Windows. Before getting this drive all of them were showing red
(less than 10% free).

That's it... a bit short. But I have a lot coming up. I just haven't
had time to report on it. I attended the
Scott Kelby Worldwide Photo
Walk using my 50mm lens almost exclusively. I ended up ordering the
parts for a new computer. I rented a Canon 24-105mm f/4 L IS lens for
Celebration V. Plus I started ripping Blu-Ray movies to 720p HD fro my
Zune to take to C-5.

It will probably take me a couple of months to tell you about all of
this, so stay tuned.